Curried Carrot (and Squash) Soup

January 19, 2010

This is a slightly sweet, intensely aromatic low-calorie soup packed with vitamins and general goodness. The orange of the carrots mixed with the yellow of the curry creates a shocking color that will light up any table. I based this recipe off a standard carrot soup recipe, but added a few yellow squashes that were languishing in my veggie bin.

Recipe Notes

You can modify this recipe to include whatever vegetables are on their last legs in your fridge. Zucchini, broccoli, parsnips, turnips, etc. When I’m feeling extra healthy I’ll throw a cup or two of spinach leaves in at the end of puree-ing (my VitaMix pulverizes them easily, see below) to add some super green power to the mix. They do a great job of “hiding” and hardly make a difference in taste.

I use my VitaMix blender to puree this recipe. In fact, I never made pureed soups before I finally dropped cash on the VitaMix because I found puree-ing in batches to be the single most annoying and tedious task I could imagine. Also, traditional blenders always seemed to make a mess and/or burn the crap out of me. The VitaMix has a nice slow speed to start with, which makes it safe and easy to use. The container itself is huge so I usually do not have to do soups in batches. Lastly, the VitaMix actually heats food up if you let it run long enough (the motor is that powerful), so I skip the step of returning the soup to the saucepan and instead let the VitaMix do the heating after adding the milk.

If you don’t have curry powder, don’t worry – you can easily make your own. In fact, I didn’t even know curry powder in it’s “off the shelf” variety existed until a few years ago. Curry powder is a mix of a number of spices including things like: corriander, saffron, cumin, mustard seed, crushed red pepper, poppy seed, cinnamon, tumeric, black peppercorn, coriander, cloves, cardamom, nutmeg, bay leaves, onion powder, ginger powder, fennel pepper, fenugreek seeds, etc. Which spices are used depends on the kind of curry but if you’ve got the basics (cumin, coriander, tumeric, cinnamon, pepper) you can almost always whip up a quick curry powder at home. Just do a quick internet search for curry powder recipes and you’re off.